the tavern, twice I was called out by in-bred drunkards regarding my limp. Only the fortuitous entrance of Jerzy (in search as always of the dog’s hair) saved me from a thrashing. How often can one believe that a Polish strongman will come to one’s rescue? Not often, I think, and soon I shall begin to carry a cane (not that I need one) or a pistol to shut the louts up. As it was, Jerzy and I stayed on at the tavern for a while and took most of the patrons’ coin with the Three Blind Men card game. (Have you been practicing? I tell you, master that and you will win all the cigarettes you could smoke in a lifetime!) In the meantime, if things get as rough as they did last week or whenever you last wrote, and don’t tell me Black Jack has now forbidden pencils at the front, I’ll send Jerzy your way. For a Pole, he’s good in a pinch.
As you can tell, young Robert was already a bit of a cutthroat, a young man more than familiar with the rough ways of tavern folk. And advising William to cheat his mates of their rations? Sharp practice indeed. Here is another, more usual, type of note, written, we think (Robert never bothered to date his letters) in the late spring of 1918.
Doughboy,
Oh, Doughboy Doughboy Doughboy! Have I one for you! You may be proud of pulling off that affaire (as you put it so daintily) the other day, and I do congratulate you on certain aspects: a redhead in the coop and a chicken for the company’s cook pot afterwards is good work indeed! Birds in both hands, and the bar would stand you for the night on the story (if true) alone. But I must tell you, this morning I had quite the affaire myself. First, there was a near-catastrophe last evening. A farmer became enraged at Babel’s chicanery, as apparently the watch had been of some value to the poor serf, and a riot near started. Welt, who should have seen it coming, had us off before the girls were even packed. So this morning I took the time to check if Amazonia was all right after our unseemly departure. I know, I know, I shouldn’t go to see her so often, it puts me at times in a blue way, but this time, oh Doughboy, this time it was different. Perhaps it was because we have camped near a quiet little stream, the weather is surprisingly mild, and she had just come back from washing, but the usual hurried, ruttish way was absent. We laughed at the farmer of the night before, and as she sought something to wear, her trunks were in such disarray that the only thing she could find were her old gypsy scarves. She came from behind her curtain (a line of rain-gray rope tied from one end of the tent to the other with an old horse blanket slung across it) and seeing my expression, she gave the queerest smile and began to dance. It wasn’t so much a dance as a waving, as though she became a rainbow breeze, and I gawked, stunned for a moment. Yes, I admit, “stunned” is the word and I am not ashamed to say so: it is only fair that a man of the world would gawk, slavering, at a mostly naked woman in a cloak of many colors. This did not last for long, however, and we were soon at it, doing things, doing such things, Doughboy. I think perhaps she was infected with the stream or the mild sunlight, but it was something, and not something the rubes get for their two dollars in the Tigress either. Breasts that once seemed ponderous felt spry, if that is a good word for an aging fortune-teller’s tits. The rest of her was spry as well, and ever since I have been as one clonked on the head, floating. I hoped writing would clear my mind but it seems to have done the exact opposite. I will go with her down to that stream at midnight tonight if I have to carry her myself. Ah, such an image: me limping (no, striding!), the great Amazonia over my shoulder under the moonlight, into the waters, all things a breeze. Hah!
In sadder news, poor Dozy seems to be on her last legs. Where Welt will find another camel is beyond me. Scranton by tomorrow night. Slay the Hun and join me, but stay away from the Amazon, she’s mine! Love, Robert the Great
Obviously feeling good after his morning gymnastics, this is the first time Robert ever refers to himself as “the Great.” Sadly for us, this is the final letter of the correspondence. William Rouncival was killed by a shell in the vicinity of Chateau Thierry during the last major German offensive of the war. The letters were sent to Robert’s parents, who then gave them to Robert when he and the Extravaganza next passed through Kingston in September of 1918. He stayed up the entire night, reading his own words to a lost brother. The following morning he went to Welt and asked for his wages for the season. True to his benign nature, Welt paid the boy knowing full well Rouncival would use the funds to abandon the Extravaganza. As for Barnabas Welt, he soon felt his age and returned to his own people in the South, living the rest of his life at a family-owned tuberculosis sanatorium in the mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Dying himself of T.B. within three years, Welt asked to be buried in full clown regalia, and his family obliged. Still somehow on her last legs, Dozy the camel was present at the funeral as the Traveling Extravaganza’s sole representative.
THE Paper Vaquero
My word, look at the time. As usual, I have dawdled over the early part of Rouncival’s life. If I have been overlong with these details, my apologies. Perhaps for my own reasons, this period of Robert the Great’s life fascinates because it is so often overlooked, or at the least unexplored. Please leave your cups right there on the table, I shall take care of them later, and we will now enter the legendary period of Rouncival’s life. Please follow me across the study to the long wall, where Robert kept his most treasured possessions. I know, I know, to forsake the comforts of the Khan’s tent can be difficult, but nevertheless . . .
Young sir, please! Though it is dangerous only in its history, please do not spin that globe; it is a relic of Longwood, Napoleon’s manor of final exile on the island of St. Helena. Thank you, yes, I am relieved now. And you may have wondered about the tremendous number of books here in the study. As I told you before, Rouncival was notoriously lethargic regarding the written word. In fact, the volumes on these shelves are merely trompe l’oeil replicas. See, the library is hollow and the authors are entirely fictitious. As you may have heard, though, the wooden books are arranged in a deliberate order, and lexicographers, library scientists, even military code breakers, have studied the catalogue system in order to discover what, if any, secret the library contains. One gentleman, who if I may comment was in all aspects a madman, actually insisted the catalogue was a coded edition of one of the alchemist Maimonides’ lost or supposedly burned treatises. To this I say only: doubtful. It is far more typical of Robert to have created a façade of false knowledge. Deploying such a disposable, and easily ascertained, trick was a weakness of his. It should be noted that examinations of the hollow volumes did reveal a number of papers, from both Rouncival and Margaret Tillinghast. During various periods of the study, both used the empty library as a repository of their more precious, or secret, correspondences. As I am sure you all know, Margaret Tillinghast—sole heiress to the Wampum Flour Company fortune, jazz baby, and occasional participant in Rouncival’s escape artistries - was the woman who, in equal measures, contributed to the rise, then fall, of Rouncival’s fame. There will assuredly be more on Ms. Tillinghast later in the tour.
Okay! What you see before you is a papier-mâché skeleton of the sort most often seen during the Mexican festival of the Day of the Dead. The hat and vest signify that this particular skeleton is meant to be that of a cowboy, or vaquero, if you will. Similar to the circus poster, this is the lone object kept by Rouncival during his second stage of wanderings. Crushed by the death of William, Robert fled North America entirely in order to be alone with his sorrow and rage. This period of his life is perhaps the most mysterious of any portion, as Rouncival did not write to anyone, his parents included. What is known is that he used his final wages to book himself passage to the Caribbean and from there wandered the Latin American periphery. It is assumed that Rouncival used his conjuring skills to perform on the street and thus keep himself afloat but, again, very little is actually known. Rouncival kept the details of his sojourn a secret, saying only to a Chicago reporter one time, “It was a sordid land, filled with snarling, sordid people, and I was just another one of them, albeit with a limp and a very bad sunburn.” It was during this time that legend says that Rouncival apprenticed with a Haitian voodoo doctor and learned many of the black arts in
